Thursday, June 26, 2008

Literacy and Prison

My mom teaches at Wyoming Correctional Facility, the jail behind Attica. Why am I telling you this? She teaches the Hispanic inmates that have little to no education below the sixth grade level to read, write, do math, etc. She teaches "illiterate" adults between the ages of 19-65 of all different levels to be "literate". They have graduation and advance beyond the sixth grade once they complete her class. Do these adults deserve to be educated? They are being taught in a bilingual classroom because there are quite a few of them who don't know English and often do not know how to read or write in Spanish either. How do they "graduate" from, essentially, elementary school and continue through school in the U.S. without necessarily knowing the language? I can only imagine that the prison school system differs from that of regular school system or does it? What makes it legitimate to obtain education in the prison system?

1 comment:

Shannon said...

I personally feel that they DO deserve to be educated. Obviously their lack of education has been a bad thing for them, and perhaps education can work to change these people and give them better opportunities for when they are out of jail